


The Power of the Dark Side

by Petralice



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, Kinda, Not Canon Compliant, POV First Person, Sith Padmé Amidala, What Have I Done, evil Padmé Amidala, more like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 15:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19428790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petralice/pseuds/Petralice
Summary: What if Padmé followed Anakin to the dark side? What if she lived?





	The Power of the Dark Side

I was raised on a planet where peace always came from kindness, love, and generosity. I tried so hard to embody those noble concepts and carry them with me in my thoughts—not only as a Queen and a Senator, but as a person; I wanted to convey the grace and beauty of peace in everything I did. It’s the way I was brought up, and the way I felt I should be. Peace was the greatest power in the universe.

I’d thought Anakin was joking when he talked of constraining others to peace. That’s why I’d laughed that way. There was no way he could really think that, really be serious.

But as I got older and (I like to hope) wiser, I noticed _power_ was the greatest power in the universe. The only way things were accomplished was at the whim of the powerful, often at the expense of the less fortunate. All I could do was provide aid and continue to be compassionate while I watched those with more wealth and influence do as they pleased. Change came from war, and winning a war was done with violence and trickery. Survivors got the scraps I could manage to give them.

I still tried to live in truth, even as the tiny lie of a forbidden love grew inside me to something moving and alive. How could I expect to raise a child in the way of integrity when the child itself was born out of deceit?

Thoughts like that melted away when Anakin held me. Only our love mattered then, erasing everything else. I would do anything to preserve moments like that, but the war looming over everything taught me nothing could be preserved.

My ideals started to crack under the threat of the future. If we lost the war we would be dead or enslaved, and if we won, I couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen to our baby. There was no way out for us. I tried to stay in the present and not think about it, but the need to wear larger and larger robes to hide what we had done made it impossible to ignore. I refused to be ashamed of our love, but rather of concealing it while touting things like honor, especially when a Jedi walked by. Could they feel through the Force how pregnant I was? Could they sense the Father’s touch? I smiled at them, all grace, while inside me my heart quaked.

I found myself wanting to be held by Anakin more often.

But I couldn’t be, not when there was a war to win. I threw myself into my work so I wouldn’t think about what would become of us. I didn’t need the Force to feel Anakin’s confusion and hurt at how distant I’d become, but I couldn’t let myself become idle, not even with him. Something was coming to a head—the end of the war was like a smell in the air—and what had before seemed so crazy and inhumane to me began to look like the only option.

So when Obi-Wan came to me to ask Anakin’s whereabouts and announce his fall to the dark side, I was quietly surprised to discover that I’d already known.

Even more of a surprise to me was that I didn’t mind as much as I should have.

“You’re wrong,” I told him numbly. “How could you even say that?”

Something in Obi-Wan’s eyes glazed over. He took a few steps away from me and put his hand to his beard as if to soothe himself when he said, “I have seen a security hologram of him…killing younglings.”

Killing younglings was something Anakin had done before, back on Tatooine, and that was even before his fall. I couldn’t prevent the rage and the tears that had poured from him then, only hold him as he sobbed and screamed.

“He was deceived by a lie; we all were,” Obi-Wan said.

The baby jerked in my womb.

The knowledge that Chancellor Palpatine was a Sith Lord, and my husband his apprentice, was just a droplet next to the ocean of a realization that Obi-Wan was going to kill Anakin. The first real flare of emotion boiled up in me as I accused him.

“He has become a very great threat,” pressed Obi-Wan after a sharp breath.

I shook my head, involuntarily looking down to my belly. Everything Anakin did, he did for family. When he massacred the sand people it was out of vengeance for a mother they had imprisoned and tortured. There was nothing that could be done for the sand people, just like there was nothing that could be done about the Jedi younglings. He was doing this for me and our baby, not to mention the Republic, and no matter what I thought, I knew there had to be love behind it.

“I can’t,” I whispered. I couldn’t betray that love, not even to a friend like Obi-Wan.

“Anakin is the father, isn’t he?”

The sadness in his eyes made my jaw clench. I said nothing.

All he could reply with after a second or two was, “I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t call out. I just watched him turn, lift the hood of his robe up over his head, and climb down into his ship, off to destroy the father of my child and the man I had pledged myself to for life.

People had died for our love. I couldn’t just let Obi-Wan make it all for nothing.

I would save him.

*

Anakin had once asked me if I was an Angel. At the age of fourteen I’d already been called beautiful, but this was different. This had come from a boy who didn’t even realize the scope of the compliment he had given me, and the way he’d said it was so innocently inquisitive.

Now, as we ran to each other, he looked more the angel than I did, with his dark robes billowing out beside him in the Mustafar heat.

“I saw your ship,” he murmured into my hair as we embraced. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was so worried about you! Obi-Wan told me you turned to the dark side. That you killed younglings!”

“Obi-Wan is trying to turn you against me,” Anakin said gently, almost smiling.

“He cares about us.”

“‘Us’?”

“He knows.” I grabbed his arm and squeezed. “He’s…coming to kill you, Anakin.”

Anakin’s lip twitched as his face tightened. He looked somewhere into the distance and said thickly, “I’m not worried about it. I’m becoming more powerful than any Jedi has ever dreamed of, and I’m doing it for you. To protect you.”

Somehow, that sent all the feelings I’d harbored for months roaring to the surface. He couldn’t protect anyone if he lost control of whatever tenuous power he’d gotten hold of, and what if Obi-Wan came and cut him down? What would we do now that there were no more rules?

Could we finally be free together?

Wildly, I buried a hand in his hair and pulled him close. “Come away with me. Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can!”

“Don’t you see we don’t have to run away anymore? I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor—I can overthrow him—and together, you and I can rule the galaxy! Make things the way we want them to be!”

“Promise me, Anakin!”

He furrowed his brow, something he did when he was concentrating or determined. His face was flushed.

My hand drifted from his hair to his cheek. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t let all this death be wasted. Promise me you’ll be there for our baby. Promise me that there really will be peace. And just for now, even if you’re lying, promise me everything will be alright no matter what.”

“Padmé, I promise. I would promise you every single one of the thousand moons of Iego if it would make you smile.”

And it did. I felt him return the smile through a kiss that pressed the curve of my belly against him. The child inside kicked in protest, and Anakin chuckled against my face.

His smile dropped when he pulled back, replaced by something as deadly hot as the lava flowing around us.

“You were with _him_ ,” he spat, and when I whipped my head to face the ship, I saw Obi-Wan walking down the ramp toward us, silhouetted by the ship’s white lights.

Icy betrayal shot through my chest. “No,” I stammered, “no, I told you he was coming, I didn’t know he was in my ship, I swear I had _no idea Anakin_!”

Those last words were jammed through my tightening throat as Anakin lifted his hand. There was a pop like all the air had disappeared from around us, and the rumble of blood in my ears. My hands raised instinctively but uselessly to grope at my own neck.

Then the air came rushing back in through my mouth in little sobbing gasps. I sputtered and grabbed my chest, blankly staring at him, a man who had never hurt me before.

He looked at me with a fury that didn’t match the calm, bright blue of his eyes, and his words were raspy and stiff. “I’ll listen only out of respect for the promise I just made, but you’re making it hard for me, Padmé.”

“Anakin, let her be,” Obi-Wan called as he approached, looking more haggard with every step. “She didn’t realize I was in her ship, I promise.”

“So all of us are making promises now!”

“Like yours to the Jedi Order?”

Anakin didn’t wince.

“Please, Obi, don’t do this,” I cried after my voice started working again.

“He’s destroyed everything the Jedi have worked for for thousands of years—everything we’ve worked for this whole war. There will be no peace now that the Jedi are gone.”

“There was no peace when the Jedi were here! Everyone had to tiptoe around the Jedi, especially Anakin and me! Things can move forward now, and we can finally help people like we should have been doing all along.”

Obi-Wan cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Padmé…Anakin choked you a few moments ago.”

“I know.” My voice shook. “But he thought I brought you here on purpose to kill him. And I’ll talk to him about it later.”

“I know you’re a Senator, but things like this can’t be talked out. I wish it were so.”

Anakin had been pacing, eager, muscles tense with the anticipation of battle. He’d already dropped his outer robe, leaving his lightsaber and intentions exposed.

Obi-Wan’s robe crumpled to the landing deck, and the two circled each other, keeping me on the outside. I laid a hand on my belly and tried to keep my tears from flowing. The heat of this lava planet was making me dizzy, but I couldn’t just leave Anakin.

“You have allowed this Dark Lord to twist your mind, until now…you have become the very thing you swore to destroy,” Obi-Wan said to his former Padawan. Disappointment, rather than malice, dripped from his voice.

“Don’t lecture me, Obi-Wan,” Anakin growled. “I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new empire!”

“Your ‘new empire’?”

He gritted his teeth. “Don’t make me kill you…”

“Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic. To democracy!”

“And what has that democracy gotten us?” I interjected to Obi-Wan’s bewilderment. “Death and suffering, endless suffering, at the hands of the Republic. We all tried to serve what we thought was the greater good, and watched so many die!”

Anakin smiled again, a ray of light in the cloudy darkness of what had been his face, but Obi-Wan drooped.

“He has gotten to you, too,” he said, a hand on his lightsaber.

“The war has gotten to me. Watching it and participating in it has gotten to me. I can’t let that be the world I bring our child into.”

“And if you’re not with me,” Anakin said, “then you’re my enemy.”

Obi-Wan unhooked his lightsaber from his belt and threw himself into a fighting stance. “Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will do what I must.”

“You will try,” rumbled Anakin, but as I moved my hand to my blaster, he turned to me. “Padmé, get back on the ship.”

“No, Anakin—let me help you—”

“Padmé, wait on the ship. This is one I have to do on my own.” He moved toward me, his eyes softening, and looked at me in a way that sent me reeling back to our time on Naboo. “I expect you to be waiting for me when I get back.”

“Remember your promise to me,” I whispered. “You’ll be there for our baby, won’t you?”

“I said I would, and I will. Go and wait for me. I love you.”

“I love you,” I said, and I went up into the ship, risking a glance back at the man who had once been my friend.

Obi-Wan had never looked so ancient.

*

The whiz and whir of clashing lightsabers had faded long ago as the battle moved them farther from the ship, but my anxiety was still fresh.

I could have helped him. Maybe I would have forced the issue if I hadn’t been so pregnant and it hadn’t been Obi-Wan he was facing, but I knew how important it was to him to do this himself. If he won, we could move forward with our lives in plain sight, our love for everyone to see and not just for whatever hid with us in corners and darkness. Plus, we could unite everyone under the Chancellor and be free from the squabbling that had prolonged the war and cost so many lives. If he lost—

I cradled my head in my palm and tried not to think about that.

All I wanted was for all this to be over. I’d grown up resilient and had kept myself from collapsing under the stress of politics for over a decade, so this should have been easy, but I jumped harder than I like to admit when the ship’s proximity alarm alerted me to a presence outside.

“Anakin,” I breathed, bolting to the door and lowering the ramp.

It was not my husband that waited for me outside.

My blaster went straight to my hand. Obi-Wan showed his palms to me, his lightsaber hanging sheathed on his belt.

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

I’d fought beside him on the battlefield before. Fights usually gave a gleam to his eye and a ruddiness to his cheeks, and he moved with grace even after the worst of them, but he seemed so much older now than he had when he’d first come to me on Coruscant. He limped, his eyes were dull, and his face shone with what could have been sweat or tears (or both). 

It terrified me.

“Where’s Anakin?”

“It’s over now.”

He faltered up the ramp and slumped down as soon as he reached a place he could sit, sagging in a way I’d never seen any Jedi do, let alone Obi-Wan.

“Did you kill him?”

“I didn’t watch him die, but there’s no way he could have survived where I left him.” My face made something in his eyes flicker. “Padmé, the man killed younglings!”

“Who knows how many younglings died as a result of our actions?” I snapped. “Who knows how many we couldn’t save? The Jedi Order sent Ahsoka. Didn’t she matter? Take me to him!”

“He’s dead. He must be.”

“Show me!”

He met my gaze for a moment, then looked straight into nothing for another. He held his hand out to me to help him to his feet.

I obliged.

“I’ll take you to where I left him,” he said, “but I can’t guarantee that he’ll be alive when we get there.”

“I have to see him for myself.”

“Very well.”

Though he needed to lean on the control panel with one hand for support, Obi-Wan chose to stand while directing the ship over the black sands of Mustafar. I don’t think he could’ve gotten back up if he’d sat down. No matter; I just steered the ship where he pointed and anxiously scanned the ground for any sign of Anakin.

“There he is,” Obi-Wan sighed when we shot past what seemed to be a nondescript lump.

I jerked the ship back around. “What, that rock?”

“I told you he couldn’t survive this.”

“You left him like this? _Alive_?”

“It was the will of the living Force…though I know how that sounds.”

I had nothing to say to him. I landed on the first flat surface I could find, and when the ship didn’t slide or sink anymore on the sand, I made to rush out the door.

Only for Obi-Wan to yank me back. “Padmé, it’s too dangerous near the lava without the Force. You can’t survive the heat and gases. Honestly I’m not quite sure how the two of us did it.”

“Then protect me. Please. Let me see him.”

He winced, but said, “I’ll help you, but I’m not sure how long I can keep it up. We can’t save him. I shouldn’t be here, and wouldn’t be if I had any other way to leave this place.”

“We have to try.”

The heat was unlike anything I’d felt on any other planet. It attacked me as the ramp lowered, raking up my bare arms like claws. I knew without the protection of Obi-Wan from inside the ship my skin would have blistered immediately, but as it was I only felt it slashing me within and without.

The heat shimmered up from the sand, making Anakin seem to wobble on the ground.

He wasn’t moving.

I ran to him, lost my footing on the soft black sand and skidded down on my backside, barely feeling the scream-hot grains burning into my skin. Was it the Force, or my own despair blocking the sensation? Did it make a difference?

“Ani, Ani, oh my Ani, what did he do to you…”

The burnt creature of the man that had been my husband stirred at the sound of my voice. He looked up with lava-colored eyes, unseeing, and reached to grab at the sand. It crumbled in his mechanical hand, the only hand he had left, and he groaned as he slid further down the bank.

“Ani? Anakin? Can you hear me?”

If he could, I couldn’t tell. Spittle glinted in the corner of his mouth and evaporated in seconds. He grabbed the sand again, pulled himself up again, slid back down again. His skin creaked and sizzled.

“I don’t know what to do,” I realized quietly. “I don’t know what to do. What do I do? How do I help you, Anakin?”

“There he is!”

I lashed my head toward the new voice, a deep but frail croak of a shout.

There stood a shadow—no, an old man in black robes. No, an…alien? Perhaps of a species I didn’t know? He was with two clone troopers, their red markings also unrecognizable.

“He’s still alive,” said the robed man, impressed but full of pity, as Anakin rolled onto his back and gave what sounded like a final sigh.

“Anakin?” I put my hand on his coarse cheek. My voice rose in panic when he didn’t respond. “Anakin! Please!”

“Miss Padmé! This is a surprise, to be sure.” The robed man was beside us without me ever noticing him approach. I jumped, and he chortled, “Perhaps it is more appropriate to call you ‘missus.’”

“Who are you? What do you want with him?”

“Oh, my dear. Of course you wouldn’t recognize me after what the Jedi have done to me.”

I stared under the hood of the robe at a face, gray, scarred, and bloated, that seemed so familiar to me, until recognition sparked at the paternal way it smiled.

“Chancellor Palpatine?”

“Excellent,” he crowed. “I fear I shall have to get used to people not knowing me at first.”

He bent down to Anakin, the smile giving way to an almost tender frown of worry as he put a hand to the burnt forehead.

“Can you help him, Chancellor?”

“It’s ‘Emperor’ now,” he said absently. “And yes, I believe so. I’ve had my troopers send for a medical capsule. What concerns me more at the moment is how you’re managing not to be burned away without the use of the Force.”

“Oh…I—”

There was a whine that gave way to a rumble as my ship activated suddenly. It lifted with a spray of sand, and as it did I felt Obi-Wan’s Force protection slide away. My skin tingled, then stung, then burned, then seemed to be pressed in from every direction by white-hot iron walls. Did I scream? I couldn’t remember. There was nothing in the universe but heat and the color red.

But then the Emperor lifted his hand, and there was peace again.

“I see,” he said through the fog of diminishing pain.

The baby fluttered weakly in my belly.

Obi-Wan must have spent the last of his energy protecting me, then flown away when he saw I would be taken care of…

…A dear friend to the last.

As we waited for the medical capsule, the Emperor told me how the Jedi had ambushed him in his office—a whole group of them, some of the most brilliant fighters the Order had, all brandishing their lightsabers and ordering him about before getting so violent that he had to resort to just as violent self-defense. In their show of power, they scarred his face with deep, permanent lines and folds, leaving him a distorted version of himself. I only half-believed it, and I think he knew that, but it was good to keep up appearances. I was sure I’d never know what really happened in his office, but it didn’t matter anymore.

*

They brought Anakin into the surgical center on a stretcher. I made my place on the Emperor’s arm, behind Anakin, where I could see the Coruscant rain pouring down on wounds that still crackled.

I watched the droids work on him through a window into the operating room, watched him thrash and scream as they peeled and cut and stabbed. I begged the Emperor to let the droids sedate him, but he smiled his fatherly smile and said, “Everything I do for him is by design. The pain of the operation will make him a much stronger and more effective channel of the dark side of the Force. He will be a better husband, father, and instrument of peace this way, I guarantee it.”

Nothing I could say would sway him, so I fell silent and continued to watch with pursed lips.

They rebuilt him from his toes to his head. Metallic implants, armored plates, and circuit boards dotted him, then encased him. When they had covered all but his face, the Emperor took me by the shoulder.

“Come. It is time to greet Darth Vader.”

_Darth Vader_ , I thought as I followed him to the operating room. _I’m sure I’ll never get used to calling him that._

But when I saw him lying there in front of me—when I saw the mask lowered onto his head and heard the first whoosh and hiss of breath forced into cybernetic lungs—I questioned if there was anything of Anakin left in this droid-thing on the table. Where was the blue-eyed man who had risked being trampled by Shaaks on Naboo just to impress me? Where was the Jedi protector who had saved my life countless times, in battle and in civilian life? Where was the lover that had shared my bed, my body, my heart?

Where was the boy who had called me an Angel?

The operating table rose through the smoke and vapor of the machines that had worked on him, slowly, so slowly. He was restrained at the wrists, bolted to the table. His breath was steady, mechanical, but mine hitched.

The Emperor glided to Anakin.

“Lord Vader,” croaked the Emperor through a scarred throat, “can you hear me?”

I put my hand to my mouth, the only gesture I could do to keep myself from screaming.

“Yes, Master,” said Anakin.

Only…it wasn’t _said_. I did hear it, but the voice wasn’t Anakin’s, and it certainly didn’t come through vocal cords. It didn’t have quite the growl of Grievous, but neither did it have the light, almost boyish tone I was used to. This voice was heavy. Beneath the commanding quality and Coruscanti accent, it buzzed. It was a voice that demanded attention and obedience. I knew Anakin loved it.

The helmeted head turned to face the Emperor. The reflection of the overhead lights slid on its polished surface.

“Where is Padmé?” Anakin—Darth Vader—asked. “Is she safe? Is she alright?”

I couldn’t help but grin as I stepped into the light. My vision danced with tears—It really was him!

“I’m here, my love.”

The Emperor drew himself up. “It seems the dark side of the Force has saved your Padmé, just as I promised—”

The wrench and pop of metal drowned out the rest of the Emperor’s words as Anakin ripped himself free of his restraints. He was unsteady in his new body, but I found a strength I’d never had before in his arms.

Perhaps this was the power of the dark side.

**Author's Note:**

> In a world where there's plenty of work to be done and other fics to be written, one person writes over 4k words on a "Padmé lives, but it's weird" AU...
> 
> Kinda want to make this a series of random pointless little stories where the twins grow up under Daddy and Mommy Vader (and grandpa Sidious, of course).
> 
> Anyway, I'm actually sorta proud of this one! This is representative of my true writing style when it comes to original pieces (I'm not trying to copy anyone's style here), so please leave honest feedback on it. I really appreciate your comments, positive or negative!
> 
> Thanks for reading, everyone.


End file.
